Iraqi mortar rounds -- obviously NOT evidence of the type necessary to justify going to war.

The Danes via Reuters:

Possible Iraqi blister gas weapons found - Denmark

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Danish troops have found dozens of mortar rounds buried in Iraq which initial chemical weapons tests show could contain blister gas, the Danish army said on Saturday.

The tests were taken after Danish troops found 36 120mm mortar rounds on Friday in southern Iraq. The Danish army said the rounds had been buried for at least 10 years.

"All the instruments showed indications of the same type of chemical compound, namely blister gas," the Danish Army Operational Command said on its Web site.

"However, this will not be confirmed until the final tests are available," it said in a statement. Results of the final tests are likely to be ready in about two days.

Blister gas, an illegal weapon which ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said he had destroyed, was extensively used against the Iranians during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. More at link

Here's a pic:



It should be obvious that these eroding mortar rounds, if they are indeed found to have a blister agent -- the most common and easily produced vesicant is mustard, or dichloroethyl sulphide -- that they were only a danger to anyone that happened to come into direct contact with either the contents of the rounds, or contaminated earth.

These are likely to be remnants of the Iran-Iraq war, when unfortunately, Saddam was 'our guy' in the region. Of course I am breaking my own rule here by speculating on the contents and age of the mortar rounds. But I can't always be armed with the straight facts.

In any event, these archaic mortar rounds are not the reason we went to war with Iraq. Neither the publicly stated casus belli -- from which the Bush Administration has been backing down from -- nor the myriad other reasons that have been floated since. One can bet that the Right Wing Echo Chamber will use these scrapyard pieces as evidence that Iraq had effective WMD.

Mustard agent, you and the press -- It's time for a bit of chemistry(hey, no whining!)

In 1921 it was noted by Rona, that mustard decomposed relatively slowly in the presence of atmospheric water vapor. Sulphides are generally less stable than oxygen containing compounds due to their long carbon chains.

Mustard hydrolyses(decomposes in the presence of water) at a sufficient rate that if these rounds did contain mustard, or another sulphide based vesicant, it is most likely that the compound has hydrolysed into other compounds. A closely related property is persistence. This property was very important to a compound's suitability for use a chemical agent. The formula for an agent's persistence is not widely known. Certainly not by the press, and not by most organic chemists. Since the publicized work into gases of war was effectively halted with the signing and ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention(CWC) ban on 10 April 1972,(London, Moscow, Washington) there is, hopefully little going on new in this field.

The formula for persistence was first worked out by Leitner, Militarwissencsh. u. Techn. Mitteil, 1926. I won't publish the formula here, as it is only necessary for mention. The formula for persistence was valuable for knowing how long an agent would be effective. It is based on the amount of time required to evaporate a like quantity of water at temperature +15C. Hence, +15C = 1. Mustard's persistence value varies over a temperature gradient from 103 @ +15C to 29 @ 30C. Mustard scales in a nearly linear fashion.

This formula does not take into account atmospheric water vapor, hence it must be adjusted in a non-linear equation. That is well beyond the scope of this exercise.

What does all this mean? It means that one can determine with a high level of accuracy the age of any mustard given a reasonably complete data set.

Don't expect any of the information on this page to make it into the minds of the masses. It is all a matter of public record -- if you know where to look -- and should be high on anyone's list of questions to any authoritative party, if an agent is found in the suspect mortar rounds.

The press isn't filled with a bunch of chemists. Judith Miller could not assess the information I have laid out on this page. She was wrong about WMD because she could not assess the information she was given. The teams in Iraq looking for this stuff could not tell you whether or not the info. I have laid out here is accurate or not. David Kay..Not a scientist.

The information I have given you will enable you to ask the questions that need to be answered given any chemical weapons finding. The formulae, and properties are different of course for various agents, but you now know the kinds of things to look out for in the press.

I am politically non-partisan. I have voted both sides of the aisle. I am however, not neutral when it comes to matters of truth. That is why I have such a low opinion of the Bush Administration. The Bush Lies™ are a topic that most anyone that ventures onto this site will already know that I am most upset by.

I should again note that I am not a chemist by training. I do have lots of time in a university chem lab, but is because of my being a gate-oxide process engineer.(a chip geek)